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While that may have worked for many, permit me to show you a better way of doing it.

When applying for Canada visa, you may apply online or submit a hardcopy Application.

With the hardcopy application, it is usually straight forward – once you have the documents, the officer who received your application can help you or guide you to arrange it; but with online, the required arrangement changes, sometimes you may have to upload proof of your finances along with the proof of your other resources like your landed properties and businesses, at other times, you may have to upload them separately.

Today, I am showing you how to prepare a combined proof of finances, where you also include the proof other resources, as this was the case with an application I submitted last week.

As you may have noticed, your proof of financial resources consists of different types of documents, including:

Official Identity card

Letter of introduction from your place of employment

Your letter of employment

Six months official pay slip (if available)

Your certified 4-6 months bank statements (advisably not more than two weeks before the application is submitted)

Affidavit/letter of sponsorship if you are being sponsored by a family member

Proof of property ownership

Financial profile

Arranging your Proof of Financial Resources

There is a particular order of arrangement which I stick with. Below is a description of the documents in the order which I like to arrange them:

Financial Profile: As the name implies, it implies all of the resources that are included in my application. The financial profile is the first page of my proof of financial resource; although there is no place in the checklist that says you must include one, I like to provide it, just to present all my finances in a easy to ready table for the processing officer. Explaining how to write this will take awfully long post. You can see a picture of the financial profile below as a guide to write yours.

Financial Profile

Affidavit/Letter of Sponsorship: if you are being sponsored by a family member, then he or she must provide you with an affidavit of sponsorship. This details the relationship between you and your sponsor, how much your sponsor I willing to sponsor you with, what your sponsor does for a living and any additional information that may be important to the processing officer

Your official Identity card: This is a straightforward inclusion, no special techniques needed – just ensure it is clear, and it carries your company name, your face, your name and your designation.

Letter of Introduction: this is a letter from the company you are employed with introducing the company very briefly, introducing you, your responsibilities at the company, your average annual remunerations and your dependent relatives if any. This letter can vary slightly if you are the owner of the company; in this case it must introduce you as such and also state the company’s average annual turnover, which must be corroborated by the company’s statement of account you include with the application.

Your employment/appointment letter: this is the letter you got at the time you resumed at your present job duty. If you have been promoted several times before you reached the current designation at your work place, you can include the promotion letters, if you have them. If you are the owner of the company, you do not need this.

Pay Slips: If your company can provide you with pay slips, please include it. If it can’t you may proceed without it. In this case I advise that you include the account into which your monthly wage is paid with the application.

Bank Statements: can be from four to six months in duration, it should be as recent as within the two week prior to your application. Although many people believe that only the turnover of the account is important, the balance on the account is equally important; you should have an idea of what your trip is likely to cost you and therefore have sufficient balance in your accounts to cover the cost. It is also important that you avoid sudden inflow of unusual large amounts into your accounts, as this could be flagged as deliberately funding your accounts for the purpose of your application – to explain this; assume your closing balance is six million naira and this is because there was a sudden inflow of five million naira shortly before you printed the statement, without proper explanation, this could be flagged.

As a business owner, endeavour also to submit personal statement of accounts as well and not just business statements of accounts only.

Proof of property: if you have landed properties, houses, cars, shares certificates, treasury bills, etc. include copies of these in your application as additional proof of your financial strength.

Proof of Business Ownership: I deliberately left this out of the list I wrote earlier; in the recent online portal, there is a separate port of upload for proof business ownership (Corporate Affairs Commission certificate and all articles of association that carries your name). But before now, if you are the owner of your business, you would have had to upload the proof along with your proof of finances. Same is the case for proof of proof of other resources that you own – houses, lands, cars, etc.

Scanning all these in the order listed above, you have successfully prepared your proof of finances.

Remember, it must be less than 4 mega-bytes to upload; and you don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the file for the size, do you?

If you have questions or comments, kindly leave them in reply to this forum topic at https://kingoftalkng.com/talk/topic/canada-visa-how-to-prepare-your-proof-of-financial-resources/, where experts will answer them for you and to benefit others too.